Litographs is a Massachusetts-based company that uses literature as inspiration for their designs. The text becomes the basis for the design. (Check out this example for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.) They’re launching a new Kickstarter campaign on Tuesday in which you can make a custom Litograph with whatever text you want. Pretty cool, right?
Custom Litographs
Tim Weiner Knows Every Secret Ever
Tim Weiner won the Pulitzer Prize for Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. Then, four years after its publication, he received a box of J. Edgar Hoover's "personal files on [FBI] intelligence operations between 1945 and 1972" from a well-connected D.C. lawyer. That treasure trove of information has since wound up in his recently published book, Enemies: A History of the FBI, and he sat with NPR's Terry Gross to talk all about it.
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Wallace Stevens Week
Wallace Stevens Week(s) begin with a sprint today at Big Other, featuring an interview with poet and critic James Longenbach, an essay on Stevens' other work, in insurance, and a list of his “most maddening, funny and bizarre” titles.
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An Interview with Rilke
How would Rilke do in a job interview? Liz Blood took her best guess.
Orsonalia
This will either make or ruin your Tuesday: a clip of Orson Welles, in 1974, reminiscing about his relationship with Hemingway. As Sadie Stein writes, “it has everything: titanic ego-clashing, disingenuous concern-trolling, bullfighting, damning with faint praise, posthumous character assassination.” You could also read Jessica Roake on Peter Biskind’s My Lunches with Orson.
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Van Gogh Was Cheap
Shakespeare was an insult master, as were Churchill, Dorothy Parker, Oscar Wilde and… Cézanne? Apparently so. In The Irish Times, Colm Tóibín reads through the painter’s letters, one of which includes a gripe that “Pissarro is an old fool [and] Monet is a wily bird.” (You could also read Claire Cameron's Millions review of Tóibín’s latest novel.)
Sick and Wrong
Recommended Reading: Dan Kois on his favorite books of the year. On Alissa Nutting's Tampa, he writes: “Tampa mixes deadpan social satire, lurid true-crime storytelling, and out-and-out porn into a poisonous stew.”